


A Comedian in a Tragedy

by dawngloaming



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Declarations Of Love, Depression, Drabble, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mental Health Issues, One Shot, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-31 13:14:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20115673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dawngloaming/pseuds/dawngloaming
Summary: In an extremely low moment, Joker feels that he can tell Bruce the truth about how he feels. He knows he can't make the love he has in his heart a reality, with his bat. He's afraid of following through, of giving up hate. But he's so tired of the hatred, all the same. He wants more, but it seems hopeless.





	A Comedian in a Tragedy

**Author's Note:**

> You can't convince me that Joker isn't depressed from time to time. His nihilistic mania seems like it would sometimes reveal another face, one that's more sad. You can't keep up such extreme energy all the time...I do think that the whole "clown" thing is its own sort of mask. Anyway, I wanted to write Joker with some human despair, similar to that which we've seen in The Killing Joke, as well as with some of that jealous desperation to know ALL of his bat that he displayed in White Knight.

Bruce gets down on a knee. It’s a hesitant and slow descent, so as not to startle what he now sees to be an insanely frail, insanely lethal creature… kneeling in a reverie, right in front of him. But when the creature looks up, it’s with the horror of a man witnessing a train wreck. A horror Bruce has never seen on the Joker’s face, through all the atrocities he’s seen him commit. And it’s enough to give HIM a heart stopping fright.  
The pallid man begins, AGAIN, to say whatever it is he’s been choking on in starts and stops. It’s been minutes on this roof, but it feels like it has been hours, eons. In a confessional tone, with pleading eyes bouncing back and forth across the stone face he gazes at, he endeavours to speak. “I…don’t know how to accept love,” he starts, and every following, wavering mention of the word comes with a sudden drop in volume. “And I don’t know if it knows how to accept me…so how could I ever give it? I knew this. I always knew it. So as long as I could remember, hate was the only gift I could hope for, beg for. Be-YOU-tiful hate.”  
The smile is back and it’s stretching so wide that his eyes nearly disappear in the creases. The impression it leaves is that of a child desperate for you to believe a convenient lie. “Love…love should be a dance, shouldn’t it? Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.” His voice pitches cartoonishly low and then swings girlishly high on each respective name. “And me? Hah, I can only dance when it’s through a fucking fire.” His garish expression morphs into a dark smile, the kind you give when telling a story in which YOU are the punchline. It’s small compared to the usual beaming malice.  
He laughs, and again, it’s incredibly muted. “I suppose…I suppose I AM afraid of it,” he says with a forced and wry tone, pitching up into a mocking singsong. “Loooove, I mean. Hah! What a ridiculous cliche … for THAT to be the only thing I truly fear. Don’t tell Scarecrow. Heh.” He wipes at his nose with a wrist, standing with a quiver.  
Bruce knows better than to interrupt THIS monologue, and keeps his attentive silence and watchful gaze. “Love can be ripped away so quickly but HATE is forever if you know how to feed the flame. It needs to prove nothing, earn nothing, live up to NOTHING. It’s the one stable thing in my life…your HATE!” Joker roughly pushes back his dripping fringe, tugging as he goes on. “Your fists connecting with my mouth, the violent pressure of your knee on my chest…it’s the chaos that give me order.”  
He towers over the normally taller man that kneels before him. His stance is as unsteady as a tree in the midst of being felled. Those stained, silk-gloved hands now move to cover the glowing, inhuman eyes peering up at him. Bruce doesn’t move but he blinks invisibly with surprise. But the Joker simply can’t stand thinking of what his bat is seeing in him, thinking of him…now that he has desecrated the temple of his carefully curated image with vulnerability.  
“I loved your hate…And yet now I CAN’T stomach it!” This comes out as a soft, broken screech of sorts. “It has COME to my attention that however brightly that hatred BURNS on your skin and in your words… your love burns THROUGH you so much deeper.”  
Bruce must have inhaled audibly, because the clown laughs, and it’s almost a relief. Almost a return to the normalcy of routine, of incessant giggling. For just a second.  
“I’m not an idiot, Bats. I see it when you look at those little bird kids of yours. I sense it when I catch the cat smiling about you and your big dumbass heart. It glows in you when you say the name of your precious little city. And that’s what I want. I want to be what you…what you LIVE for. The way you are for me. YOU are what I need to live another day longer in this mundane timeline.” That lilting voice has grown a small rasping sound from overuse.  
“But no matter. I can’t have any more of you than I already do…and what used to be my everything feels so damn small, now. There is nothing new under the sun, even under the moon. I know it now…and that feels like losing everything.” Bruce feels the sudden press of a forehead against his own. The jolting ramble peters out into a dejected mumble. It’s barely audible as the rain rages on.  
Another eternity seems to pass. And then Bruce moves. Gently, slowly he removes the bony hands blocking his vision. The Joker lets him. Once again, the Joker watches the bat watching him. And in this hushed moment, Bruce thinks to himself, “This is a person…that I have never known, in all my life.”


End file.
